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Oct 29, 2017 - We are the people not afraid to listen and be transformed. We're the ones who sang. Psalms and prayers an
ARE WE REFORMED YET? SCRIPTURE: PSALM 90; MATTHEW 22: 34-40 GRACE COVENANT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ASHEVILLE, NC October 29, 2017 The Rev. Dr. Marcia Mount Shoop, Pastor It was an accidental journey, really. He was fleeing his own country—no longer welcome there because of his religious beliefs. He had to get out quickly. He dressed up like a farm worker and scaled down knotted sheets to escape. A lecture that he attended by his colleague raised the stakes in an already contentious time. New ideas were emerging, new ways of thinking. The government was cracking down. And so he set out on the road to a new country—to a place where he could continue to speak out against the abuses of power he saw. He was a refugee. The church wanted him dead. On his journey, he planned to head to a university town and bury himself in books. He loved reading books and he loved writing. But he got wind of some violence on the road he was traveling. Skirmishes were erupting all over—they had been for pretty much his whole life. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t heard talk about change—and how much we needed change. Instead of burying himself in the library stacks until all this blew over, he ended up in another city—just for one night, he thought. That one night turned into 25 years and it wasn’t just his route that took a turn that night, but history. That accidental journey folded into a melding together of ecclesial and civil power that touches our lives as Christians and as citizens of the United States of America every single day. That refugee was a 27 year old French lawyer and cleric, John Calvin, and that city that became his accidental home was Geneva, Switzerland—and that journey was in 1536 when Calvin was run out of Paris for asking hard questions of the Roman Catholic church, of which he was an adherent. Like Martin Luther before him, and many other Reformers of his time, Calvin’s plan was not to start a new faith tradition, but to engage in a conversation about change and integrity with the church he loved. Today we celebrate 500 years since Martin Luther (or someone acting in his stead) nailed his 95 theses to the church door of the Wittenberg Cathedral in Germany. It



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was sort of a bulletin board back then—in an academic town—it was a way to engage in conversation, a conversation about power—the church’s power and God’s. When the church pushed back, Luther pushed back, too. He would eventually be excommunicated. Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries was a series of Reformations and Counter Reformations—those were violent times, those were generative times. Today we remember and we celebrate the courage to stand up and ask the hard questions of the most powerful institutions in society—that is the heart of what it means to be Reformed and always reforming. Mikah Meyer: (Shares about growing up and not seeing other Christians like him—believing that God loved him, asking the church to be true to Christ’s love and welcome). Reformed and always reforming is not just a concept to me, it has been my life. Part II Marcia: Calvin became more and more determined to spread these reformed ideas. He would send out secret missionaries to teach people about scripture and God’s grace and God’s sovereignty. He and his Reformed colleagues would send people into hostile territory where they would have secret worship services and Bible studies. They would learn to sing the Psalms—Calvin put the Psalms to music so that people could remember the words—he knew music was a powerful vehicle. Singing the Psalms became the mark of a Protestant in France—and could lead to imprisonment and even death. Those who sang the Psalms were at times even rounded up and massacred for their beliefs. Calvin responded to the forceful crackdowns of his day with determination that in turn created more tension and hostility. And about two years after he arrived in Geneva he was run out of town—some powerful families of Geneva didn’t like what he was up to so he spent the next few years in Strasbourg.



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Chaos in Geneva created an opportunity for Calvin and other Reformers to return there after some Genevans came to him and pleaded for him to return. They returned to a more conducive environment for change. In fact, Geneva was now a city with many refugees—they were purchasing citizenship and the right to vote and they wanted reform. Those who opposed Calvin were no match for the momentum he was riding in Geneva upon his return. He and his Company of Pastors gained not just ecclesial power, but civil power. Calvin was often at the head of the Consistory—a committee of ministers and civil officials, a sort of moral court in Geneva. The Consistory listened to cases of moral failures for any and all citizens of Geneva. It meted out punishments for moral lapses like not attending daily sermons to adultery to marital strife. Just like the Roman Church when it got too cozy with the State, the Genevan marriage between church and civil authority was ripe for power to be abused. We Presbyterians are heirs to both the courage to protest abusive power and the capacity to become those who abuse their power. Calvin and his colleagues came down hard on opponents—encouraging everything from barring them from the Communion Table to exile to even execution in some cases. Indeed Reformed churches in the global north have been colonizers, oppressors, and power abusers even as we have been evangelists for freedom, education, and religious liberty. The same tradition that has taught us to have moral courage has taught us to feel entitled to political power and cultural currency. We must be able to see and look deeply at both parts of our inheritance. Ours is a complicated heritage—rich with a commitment to learning and engagement with the world, and fraught with turns of arrogance, judgment, and intolerance toward non-conformists. Luther’s new ideas opened up questions of power in Germany that emboldened the peasant class to revolt against economic injustice. Those revolutionaries counted Luther as a source of inspiration. But, Luther washed his hands of their revolt saying such a challenge to the social order was not what he intended, and scores of peasants were killed in a government crack down that Luther approved of publicly. Calvinism spread throughout the world—including across the ocean to those who colonized this country. Strong Reformed religious convictions helped define the religious, social, political, and economic landscape of America.



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Indeed those ideas helped to feed both the commitment to freedom of conscience that unleashed the explosion of denominations in this country and the sentiments of moral superiority that helped fuel the genocide of First Nation peoples throughout the North American continent. The shame of chattel slavery in our country was both propped up by and challenged by our Reformed beliefs and adherents to our faith tradition. Mainline Protestantism losing its favored place in the American moral and ethical landscape in our contemporary historical moment may be the best thing that could have happened to us as Reformed believers. Being pushed back to the margins may well reawaken our reforming spirit that reminds us: we are not here to prop up institutions—that would be the height of idolatry. We are here to spread the Gospel and live as Christ’s people in a world we must listen to—we must hear and respond to the suffering that is both around us and within us. We must confess the sins of our pride and self-loathing and lack of trust in God out loud together. We must be open to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit to move in the body gathered in Christ’s name and for Christ’s purposes. We must not grasp at power that was never ours to have—the power to limit God’s grace or God’s power to redeem. We are formed by a tradition that includes falling prey to the seductive power of enforced conformity. We are also a tradition born of refugees seeking community, connection and transformation. Mikah Meyer: (Shares about Queer for Christ and how it creates church/ministry from relationships of those alienated, those who had not seen themselves in the church, etc.) Marcia: “Lord in you do we trust. You are the strength of our lives.” (Psalm 90) What is the greatest commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.



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Putting God at the center means we are always to resist the siren song of idolatry— that is the temptation to make finite, human things into infinite, divine things. The church is called to embody God’s love in the world. The church is not to be mistaken for God. The church is to embody God’s grace in the world. The church does not determine or fence or presume to have all knowledge about God’s grace in the world. Calvin’s unlikely journey echoes in the journey that continues today for us as people of faith in a contentious world. Our moment in history might have Twitter instead of the printing press to thank for how movements of change take hold, but the questions are timeless and no less pressing than they were in 16th century European cities like Zurich, Wittenberg, Geneva, Edinburgh, London and beyond. Reformation was about change from the margins, not from the centers of power. And when the church stops listening to the margins, it stops being reformed and always reforming. Who are the voices speaking to the way power is used and abused in our world today? Black Lives Matter. #metoo. Queer for Christ. NFL players taking a knee. Resistance to power that abuses is a spiritual practice and a moral imperative. We must tune our ears always to the margins. We are the people not afraid to listen and be transformed. We’re the ones who sang Psalms and prayers and scripture and confession even when everything in the world was shifting and our very lives were at stake. This reforming spirit in our spiritual DNA is defined not by pride, but by trust in a God who seeks nothing short of the healing of the whole wide world. Brothers and sisters, let us stand now and affirm our faith together with the music of reformation and transformation that sings to us from our past, that sings to us about our very present God in times of trouble. It is the song of faith that must set the cadence of our journey into a future God is calling us to trust. Thanks be to God.



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